Rating Scale and Definitions

• MERIS assigns credit ratings on the National Rating Scale. • A National Scale Rating (NSR) is an opinion of the relative creditworthiness of entities and issues in a particular country. • NSRs are not designed to be compared between countries, rather they address relative risk within a given country.

NSR Criteria: • NSRs take into account the intrinsic financial strength of the obligor. • External support factors to the issue may be taken into consideration. • Balance between qualitative and quantitative analysis.